Artwork Culsu's Art & Maps

[Culsu]

First came the explorers. Then settlers followed them over the Dawn Sea to these wild and new lands, hoping to find a new place to live, to farm, to make a fortune. But New Falonde was not empty. Old ruins of vast Elven cities waited in the wilds, and tribes of orcs, lizardmen, and feral elves roamed the plains and deep forests of the continent...

Private commission for a tabletop round, showing a setting very much inspired by the 17th century US eastern seaboard.

 

[Culsu]

Not a map this time. Tried out a means to create a galaxy illustration, and a little comet coming for a visit after a long travel through the void between galaxies.

 

[Culsu]

An unnamed WarShip on patrol with two flights of ASF as escorts (large image), and with it's jump sail unfurled (small image). Based on classic Battletech images and the art of the great mattPLOG.

Well, I've done a few Battletech pieces before, but this is a new one. Ironically, it only came about because mattPLOG isn't taking commission right now. Somehow I got it into my mind to try my hand at a two-point perspective drawing. Much hairpulling and grinding on teeth ensued, because my mind couldn't wrap itself around the concept of how to use so many perspective grid lines. Against much cussing any the urge to delete the WIP several times, I managed to pull through, and I'm extremely happy with the final result!

 

[Culsu]

Left adrift in the icy rings of Griffon VI after the calamity that befell the world of Griffins Roost after the fall of the Star League, the original colonists' descendants stumble across the intact hull of the SLS Morristown, a Potemkin-class troop cruiser that was part of the original colonization effort.

This was done as a commission for @LordSunhawk's Deep Periphery Quest that already had this planetary map and this star system map. The ships were first created as barebones models in Tinkercad, then put into perspective and painted over/expanded on. The rest is digitally hand-drawn in Photoshop.

For the sake of completion here's the ship just as a cinematic illustration:

 

[Culsu]

Somehow I was able to find some hours between commissions to enter into the #cartographersguild #mapchallenge for March 2021. The topic was Space Invaders. I started with building a generic planet and went wild with the ideas after that. Dropships and other elements are all drawn in the right perspective, models were crafted in #tinkercad or repurposed from other works and painted/drawn in #photoshop. Hope you like it!

And I'm obviously going to re-use it as a base for a "true" BTech illustration at some point.

 

[Culsu]

Map done for an upcoming dark fantasy novel.

 

[Culsu]

Another a commission for @LordSunhawk's Deep Periphery Quest.

 

[Culsu]

A parchment style map I created to try out some new approaches and color schemes. It's consciously less detailed than most other maps I've made to evoke the idea that this could actually be in use in universe someplace.

 

[Culsu]

Finally moving up to the last steps on this monster (though there are still some special touches to come, so stay tuned^^): labelling. Example image shows roughly 25 of the complete map.

 

[Culsu]

Sneak peek on a little something I'm working on. #TheWitcher

 

[Culsu]

The Continents of Esseas and Tyrean. Finally done, and very happy with it. #commissionsopen #commission #rpggame #independentartists #fantasymap #maps #roleplay #penandpaperrpg

 

[Culsu]

Alright, here's the actual image of the map, reduced to 25% of its original size.

 

[Culsu]

This one has been four years in the making. It originially started out just as a regional map for the Kingdom of Castitia, and eventually spiralled into half a dozen regional maps, then a combination of those PLUS three more regions. The original exceeds a size of 16K x 7.5K pixels; this one obviously has been reduced and is a bit larger than a third of that. Building this world (well, it's northern half) together with the client over the years has been a real treat, and now I can finally share the combined piece with all of you. Inspirations were obviously taken from real world cultures by my client.

And now I'm looking forward to eventually draw the southern half of the globe...

 

[Culsu]

I recently realized that I had tucked away Wonderdraft on my harddrive and started up the program after a long hiatus. I did the base map in a really short time, then used another day to retouch it in Photoshop, to a surprisingly good result, in my opinion. Given the relative speed in which I was able to complete this, I've been thinking about adding another category to the commissions I offer.

So, if you want a colored map, but don't want to spend the kind of money that usually comes with such a project and are willing to accept the stylistic limitations that come with a program like Wonderdraft, this might be an option for you. I think I may structure it like this: Wonderdraft-based map --> Wonderdraft-based map with additional custom Photoshop work --> custom Photoshop map.

I'll also create a few more maps to be sold as a bundle on DriveThruRPG.

 

[Culsu]

Diving into Wonderdraft really has proven to be a godsend. With some preliminary custom assets I've been able to greatly streamline my work process without much of a decrease in quality (especially with fully overhauled, clearer custom assets underway). Below you can see the three stages that I saved for this project.

Image one is what Wonderdraft gave me. Up front work here was creating the water texture, and the mountain and tree assets.

Image two represents the fine tuning in Photoshop of the textures, most of the shading, and placement of additional terrain features I wasn't comfortable with in Wonderdraft.

Image three is the final map, with custom features added and refined in Photoshop!

 

[Culsu]

Here's the final map at the better resolution.

 

[Culsu]

Spanning from snowy highlands and endless cold forests in its north to the rolling, wandering dunes of the Nanditan Desert in the south, the continent of Lórad is home to a multitude of realms of men, elves, dwarfs and other races, ranging from powerful kingdoms seeking to dominate to small communities content to live in peace with their immediate neighbors. Magic runs strong through the lands, and gates to realms of sidhe and the underworld alike can be found on focal points across the continent. Flanked in the north by the icy realms of Scandar, and the teeming jungles and grand deserts of Isthalan in the south, Lórand lacks neither danger nor opportunity.

This is the culmination of my current efforts with custom-made assets in #Wonderdraft, and the result is pretty much indistinguishable from a fully custom hand-drawn map to me.

 

[Culsu]

The Witcher 3 has been one, if not the all-time favourite game in my library, and the crowning finale of the trilogy of games that I've been playing for more than ten years. I never really got around to draw a map of the continent, though, getting bogged down, then losing focus, then having a thousand other things on my plate. But with the second season of the Netflix show around the corner (and hopefully it'll be better than the first season, which in my opinion was saved and carried on the shoulders of Henry Cavill and Anya Chalotra alone) I dug up the file and finally finished my take on the setting.

 

[Culsu]

I was recently given the opportunity to recreate a small part of Atallas, one of my older maps that's still one of my favourites. Writer Aidan Hennessy asked me to bring the Crusader Lands to live, a region smack in the middle between a vast desert in the north and extensive mountain ranges in the south, dominated by lush jungles and wide plains. He didn't have to ask twice!

The map was the first commissioned piece done in my mixed Wonderdraft/Photoshop style (trees & mountains in Wonderdraft made from custom assets, everything else and post-processing done in Photoshop), which allows for the benefits of getting a full color map at a greatly reduced rate!

 

[Culsu]

Three pieces I've done while gathering info to get myself back in the mood again. They are for a Battletech fic/AU I'll hopefully write. Eventually. Maybe.